1. Field of the Invention
This invention is generally directed to portable food preparation or kitchen appliances and particularly to automated cutting machines for removing kernels from ears of corn wherein the machines include rotatably driven spindles for supporting the corn relative to a longitudinally movably cutting element which may be selectively adjusted to insure a proper cutting depth for severing the corn kernels from the cobs.
2. History of the Invention
There have been many machines which have been designed and developed for the purpose of removing kernels from ears of corn. Some of these machnes have been particularly designed for industrial usage wherein large and bulky equipment is utilized to process the corn to either obtain the kernels as seeds or feed or to obtain whole kernels which can be canned or frozen for consumer sales and consumption. Many prior art machines have not proved to be efficient or functional as such machines could not be used to remove whole kernels of corn from a cob without either destroying portions of the hulls of the kernels or without removing portions of the husks. Also, many machines are not versatile enough to be utilized on varying sizes of ears of corn and therefore do not adequately remove all the kernels from the cob.
In prior art machines that attempt to use several arcuate cutters to remove the kernels, the curvature of the blades does not adequately match the configuration of the ears of corn being processed thereby causing some kernels to be cut to high so that portions of the kernels remain on the cob and others may not be cut at all. The use of spring-loaded curved blades has not satisfactorily solved these problems.
In addition to the foregoing, too many prior art machines remain very labor intensive and are often times very unsafe to operate. Large and complicated machines which are powered by hand operated cranks require a great deal of physical effort to be expended to operate the machine for each ear of corn being processed. Even with very simplified machines which are processed by hand cranks, such as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 240,052 to Stover, require an extreme amount of physical effort to operate. Hand powered machines inherently operate with a great deal of resistance as the movement of the corn cob and cutting mechanism is relatively slow. In effect, the cutting mechanism and ears of corn are being simply pushed at each other thereby causing many of the kernels to be forced from the cobs and not clearly cut therefrom.
As mentioned above, prior art machines are also not safe to operate. Too often, the cutting mechanisms are activated while an operator's hands are either too close thereto or are free to be accidentally placed in a hazardous position. Some addition examples of prior art include U.S. Pat. Nos. 247,718 to Warfield, 258,147 to Warfield, 276,054 to Longsdorf, 346,585 to Davison, 1,127,548 to Turner and 2,566,568 to Ives.